"Black hole" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... found it a convenient plea when he restored the dignity of the Roman Senate, but destroyed its independence. It gave countenance to and justified all the atrocities of the Inquisition in Spain. It forced out the stifled groans that issued from the Black Hole of Calcutta. It was written in tears upon the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, and pointed to those dark recesses upon whose gloomy thresholds there was never seen ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... but made in Birmingham), can pass as an evening gown in the tropics. The cabin was on one of the liners which, calling at odd places like Genoa, Naples, Algiers, etc., allows you to pick up letters brought by the mail boat to Port Said. The inhabitants of the inner, double berthed black hole, called by courtesy a cabin, were the mother and her last unmarried ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... heady-smelling liquor, had deposited their burden beside the drums, and formed a second circle. The balance of the thousand had crowded itself together as best it might, leaving bare the center of the clearing with its black hole and fangs of poles. Kirby, looking down at these legions, did not wonder that ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... glomeration^, agglomeration; conglobation^; conglomeration, conglomerate; coacervate [Chem], coacervation [Chem], coagmentation^, aggregation, concentration, congestion, omnium gaterum [Lat.], spicilegium^, black hole of Calcutta; quantity &c (greatness) 31. collector, gatherer; whip, whipper in. V. assemble [be or come together], collect, muster; meet, unite, join, rejoin; cluster, flock, swarm, surge, stream, herd, crowd, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Sloper I cannot say. It is certain, however, that he took the lantern and the tailor's supper into the hold and stood over the little man whilst he ate and drank. When the retired tailor had finished his repast he asked Robins if he was to be kept locked up in that black hole all night without anything to ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... the centre of its floor pierced by the black hole leading down to the next and lowest level, was lighted dimly by lamps and candles standing upon shelves which jutted from the earthen walls. From all the galleries radiating from it, files of men, staggering under weighted baskets, kept coming to be relieved ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... does not lie in the system itself, but in its application. It is a humane idea carried out inhumanely, so inhumanely that when the Black Hole of Calcutta is forgotten Englishmen will still hang their heads for shame at ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... and split kindling wood, having had none of the feast, was not very sleepy, and woke up when he heard footsteps near him. The magicians asked him if he could show them to the lowest part of the castle. "All right," said he; "this way;" and he led them to where there was a great black hole, with a windlass over it. "Get in the bucket," said he, "and I ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... the Aire Saint-Mittre loses its animation, and looks like some great black hole. At the far end one may just espy the dying embers of the gipsies' fires, and at times shadows slink noiselessly into the dense darkness. The place becomes quite sinister, particularly in ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... goes into a black hole that yawns in the middle of a muddy field. I hadn't gone far, either, before I discovers that being your own street light wasn't such an easy trick. I expect a miner has to wear his lamp on his head so's to have his hands free to swing a pick. But I'll be hanged if it's ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... blow this afternoon had jeopardized the entire scheme. Indeed, it was on the verge of utter ruin. For Newman was in the black hole in irons, and the ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... account of Norman character, I must unwillingly stop for to-day—because, as you choose to spend your University money in building ball-rooms instead of lecture-rooms, I dare not keep you much longer in this black hole, with its nineteenth century ventilation. I try your patience—and tax your breath—only for a few minutes more in drawing the necessary ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... we slept. Our breath keeps life agoing through the nose when we are asleep. Boys that stay in a room all day should not breathe. They should wait till they get outdoors. Boys in a room make carbonicide. Carbonicide is more poisonous than mad dogs. A heap of soldiers was in a black hole in India and carbonicide got into that black hole and killed nearly every one afore morning. Girls kill the breath with corsets that squeeze the diagram. Girls can't run or holler like boys because their diagram is squeezed too much. ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... the way they get the baggage on board, Jennie," said Rollo. "I never should have thought of getting baggage on board in that way; should you, Jennie? I wonder where the trunks go to when the rope lets them down. It is in some great black hole, I have no doubt, down in the ship. The next load of trunks that comes I have a great ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... intelligence was received of the destruction of the English settlement at Calcutta by Surajah Dowlah, the Nabob of Bengal. Although scarcely any resistance had been made, the English prisoners, 146 in number, were all thrust into a close and narrow apartment called the Black Hole, which, in such a climate, would have been too close and too narrow for a single prisoner. Their sufferings during the dreadful night, until death put an end to the misery of most, cannot be described; ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... Will you throw its contents on the sand, and go away satisfied with these imperfect glimpses of sea-life? Will you take them home indeed, but consign them to a crowded bowl, to die like the prisoners in the Black Hole of Calcutta? Or will you give to each a roomy basin with water, and plants to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... grass seemed dingied with coal-dust. "A dromedary town," Eileen dubbed it; for it consisted of a long level with two humps, standing in a bleak desert. On one of the humps she found herself perched. Below—between the humps—lay the town proper, with its savour of grime and gain. The Black Hole was Eileen's name for this quarter; and indeed you might leave your hump, bathed in sunlight, dusty but still sunlight, and as you came down the old wagon-road you would plunge deeper and deeper into the yellowish fog which the poor townspeople mistook for daylight. The streets ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... merely slid from its position a thin slab, pushing it half way off of its square base. Instantly the sound of rushing water filled the ear, and the unaccountable, muffled roar that had puzzled them was half explained. The block was hollow, revealing a deep, black hole, out of which poured the sound of the hidden stream. The mystified observers could plainly see the water some ten feet below the surface of the earth, gliding swiftly off through a subterranean passage. ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... think he likes having me with him, but still he's as gloomy and as dull as can be. 'T was only yesterday he took me to the works, and you'd ha' thought us two Quakers as the spirit hadn't moved, all the way down we were so mum. It's a place to craze a man, certainly; such a noisy black hole! There were one or two things worth looking at, the bellows for instance, or the gale they called a bellows. I could ha' stood near it a whole day; and if I'd a berth in that place, I should like to be bellows-man, if there is such a one. But Jem weren't diverted even with that; he stood ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... unshackled us, and opened a lattice door of heavy iron, bidding us enter. I knew then that we were going into a dungeon, deep under the walls of a British fort somewhere on the frontier. A thought stung me as D'ri and I entered this black hole and sat upon a heap of straw. Was this to be the end of our fighting ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... you the truth,—I can do it now,—for me it means a jump out of a particularly black hole. You must understand that we're not doing downright badly; we pay our way, but that was about all. I, individually, shouldn't have paid my way for many months longer. God! how I clutched at it! You don't know what it is, Rolfe, to see ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... "Suicide Bridge," because it was, and was at, such a specially dangerous spot. The British trenches were in the foreground and beyond the bridge. We held these trenches for fourteen days against the enemy's attacks. The gap was nine feet deep at this corner, and the black hole on the left faintly showing a fireplace was our kitchen, scarred by bullet marks made ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... here called Howell, was John Zephaniah Holwell, a remarkable man, whose name is intimately associated with the early history of British India, one of the few survivors of the Black Hole imprisonment, the successor of {214} Clive as governor, and a writer on many subjects connected with Hindoo antiquities. Swinney enrols ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... with one hand while he grasped his firelock with the other. The rest were accoutred in similar style, excepting three ragamuffins without shirts, and with but a pair and a half of breeches between them; wherefore they were sent to the black hole, to keep them out of sight, that they might not disgrace ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... new Government alone had to bear the burden. At the end of summer Pitt sent a great expedition to attack Rochefort; the military and naval commanders disagreed, and the consequence was failure. There was no light except from far-off India, where Clive won the great victory of Plassey, avenged the Black Hole of Calcutta, and prepared the ruin of the French power and the undisputed ascendency ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... side by side, looking mournfully at the little black hole made by Mr. Jones's bullet under the swelling breast of a dazzling and as it were sacred whiteness. It rose and fell slightly—so slightly that only the eyes of the lover could detect the faint stir of life. ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... protest, three or four linnets flew down and were caught. Taking them from the nets, he showed them to me, remarking, with a short laugh, that they were all young males. Then he thrust them down the stocking-leg which served as an entrance to the covered box he kept his birds in—the black hole in which their captive life begins, where they were now all vainly fluttering to get out. Going back to the previous subject, he said that he knew very well that many persons disliked a bird-catcher, but there was one thing that nobody could say against him—he wasn't cruel; he ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... Pool lies between the Long Pool and the Rock Pool; it is a circular, deep, black hole, in which the waters collect before dashing and roaring down between the great gray boulders; and to fish it you must get out on certain knife-like ledges that seem to offer anything but a secure foothold. However, Miss Honnor did not think twice about it; and, indeed, as she made her way out on ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... right, old fellow. Come along, you are just in time to take her home; I must be off, or black hole for me." ...
— Legend of Moulin Huet • Lizzie A. Freeth
... stone, aside. It slid over the wet rock. There, in its place, gaped a black hole that penetrated ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... was a place, perhaps sixty feet long by less than twenty-five wide. Into this "black hole," where the upright space between decks was less than seven feet, were crowded one hundred and seventy naked creatures, like hogs ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... Mayo or the fever-sheds of Skibbereen. Crowded and filthy, carrying double the legal number of passengers, who were ill-fed and imperfectly clothed, and having no doctor on board, the holds, says an eyewitness, were like the Black Hole of Calcutta, and deaths occurred in myriads. The survivors, on their arrival in the new country, continued to die and to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... partly because Western men never argue a point when that little black hole is staring them in the face, partly because he remembered with a rush that the last time he had fully possessed his consciousness he had been lying in the snow with the cross gripped hard and the toppling ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... begins to come in circulation, and then easily pick out their man. And now comes the shameful part. In plain English, the prisoner is tortured until he confesses and (if that be possible) restores the money. To keep him alone, day and night, in the black hole, is to inflict on the Marquesan torture inexpressible. Even his robberies are carried on in the plain daylight, under the open sky, with the stimulus of enterprise, and the countenance of an accomplice; his terror of the dark is still insurmountable; conceive, then, what he endures in his solitary ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Apollo, or any god or goddess you please. We were so absurd as to pay a scudo to be taken through a vile tunnel, accompanied by two torch-bearers, and two other dirty wretches, who often carry us pick-a-back through one black hole into another, splashing us through dark pools, putting us down here and there as they pleased, picking us up again, grinning like demons, and by dint of shaking their torches above, and disturbing the water below, raising foul smells enough to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... be glad to hear that I am returned, without any commission as yet; without any wounds or glory; but,—at any rate, alive and harty. On board our ship, we were almost as crowded as poor Mr. Holwell and his friends in their Black Hole at Calicutta. We had rough weather, and some of the gentlemen volunteers, who prefer smooth water, grumbled not a little. My gentlemen's stomachs are dainty; and after Braund's cookery and White's kick-shaws, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... one corner. Then, shading a very modern flash-light with a fold of his robe, he showed me one of the square flags lifted, and a black hole yawning in ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... The notorious "Black Hole," in which the Rajah Suraja Dowla cast 150 of the principal prisoners when he obtained possession of Calcutta in 1756, is at present changed into a warehouse. At the entrance stands an obelisk fifty feet high, and on it are inscribed the names ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... world again, Jane Vail," he said. "You in yours and I in mine, and 'tis a far cry between the two. 'Twas the black hole of death loosed ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... to her blameworthy; all that change in her life had come as of itself and in spite of herself; and really, after all, there was no harm in it. She prayed for that good man, who certainly needed her spiritual aid: he went so seldom to church and lived in such a dreary black hole. Her prayers and interest would for sure bring him to a better frame of mind. And yet she must watch, keep strong, avoid the dangers: her honour was a tender thing; and people were wicked. She stayed longer than usual in the confessional ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... say, Jasper. Waves like mountains; then a black hole, black as pitch, and great high walls. After that—I'll tell 'ee dreckly. As for the maid, ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... beam, and momentarily fell upon a black hole in the thickset hedge. The light disappeared, and as I extended my hand to Carneta she grasped it and climbed up ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... Later, in his sleepless bed he lay, saying now and then: "To die at home! Surely I may be granted at least this." And he listened for the inner voices. But they were not speaking any more, and the black hole of silence grew more dreadful to him than their arguments. Then the dawn came in at his window, and he lay watching its gray grow warm into color, until suddenly he sprang from his bed and looked at the sea. Blue ...
— Padre Ignacio - Or The Song of Temptation • Owen Wister
... leave his hands, some of the wounded are swallowed up by the black hole of the Refuge; others are sent back to the bigger clearing-station contrived in the trench on ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... inclosing it encouraged me greatly. It was very friable and so shallow that my scissors'-point picked it at once. In five minutes' time the brick was clear, so that I easily lifted it out and set it on the floor. The small black hole which was left was large enough to admit my hand. I wasted no time thrusting it in, expecting to feel the box at once and draw it out. But it was farther back than I expected, and while I was feeling about something gave way and fell with ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... You'll do now; but you've had a narrow escape. There, you can go up on deck every day a bit, but keep out of the sun; it's very hot, and getting hotter. It will do you more good than stopping down in this black hole." ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... up hastily, and it went out. His perception of possibilities enlarged, and he felt for and replaced the candle in its candlestick. "Here! you be lit," said Mr. Fotheringay, and forthwith the candle was flaring, and he saw a little black hole in the toilet-cover, with a wisp of smoke rising from it. For a time he stared from this to the little flame and back, and then looked up and met his own gaze in the looking-glass. By this help he communed with himself in silence for ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... to see that old flunkey of the Empire, gaunt and stooping, covered with filth and crying like Jeremiah: "This is the end," with his toothless mouth wide open like a great black hole. I was afraid and ashamed before him, I longed to see his back; and I thought to myself: "O Monsieur Chalmette! O my little vineyard ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... holding it down in the earth. Soeren put the tethering-rope round his neck and pulled with all his might, it did give way; but at the same time something seemed to break inside him. Everything went dark, and a big black hole appeared in the earth. ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the outsiders turned in, first the second hand and then the foreman, and, plunging into the "Black Hole," made their toilettes du soir. Then active operations commenced forthwith. In one compartment of the kneading-trough was the "sponge," which had been prepared by the foreman early in the evening, and which now, having properly settled, ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... delighted in space and freedom. You would fancy its notion of the place for a nest would be the openest field it could find; that anything like confinement would be an agony to it; that it would almost expire of horror at the sight of a black hole. ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... and reading-room worthy of the capital of India; and also the country-house of Warren Hastings at Alipur, for the entertainment of Indian princes. Lord Curzon restored, at his own cost, the monument which formerly commemorated the massacre of the Black Hole, and a tablet let into the wall of the general post office indicates the position of the Black Hole in the north-east bastion of Fort William, now occupied by the roadway. Government House, which is situated near the Maidan and Eden Gardens, is the residence of the viceroy; ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... couple of hundred feet long and came out in the old creek bed, like I said—up above the flood area. Blakeley, when I saw the light of day—or the light of night rather, because anything was lighter than that black hole—and when I laid that skinny little kid down—he doesn't weigh fifty pounds, Blakeley—I just said to myself, 'By the great Eternal, I'm going to stick to him like glue!' That's what I said. Even then I didn't know he had been over to plead with those fellows and ask them ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... red ant from yonder ant-hill. He creeps this way and that, and anon is seen trespassing in the precincts of the unhealthy court. He crosses its centre, when, click! and in an instant his place knows him no more, and a black hole marks the spot where he met his fate, which is now being duly celebrated in a supplementary fete ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... cases not found in either of the foregoing classes, but where there is something in common between the pairs, as (Church, Temple.) (Pocket, Black Hole.) ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... so much as to meet him in a snug quartett party, and hear his manner of playing his own music. If you can bring about such a thing while I am in town, either at Chelsea, or at Mr. Burney's, or at Mr. Salomon's, or I care not where—if it were even in the Black Hole at Calcutta (if it is a good hole for music)—I say, if by hook or crook you could manage such a thing, you should be my Magnus Apollo for the rest of your life. I mention Salomon because we are a little acquainted. He has twice asked me to call upon him, and I certainly ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... having borne the air of that city—in fact, upon having survived such a collision with the local remembrances of the poor historian, very much in those terms which Mr. Governor Holwell might have used on finding himself 'pretty bobbish' on the morning after the memorable night in the Black Hole of Calcutta: he could hardly believe that he still lived. [Footnote 1] And yet, how had the eloquent historian trespassed on his patience and his weak powers of toleration? Livy was certainly not very learned ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... labor-saving machinery, they contrive to make the one, the joints of his wood-work, and the other, those of his iron-work, tighter and tighter, and if it were possible for them to accomplish fully their manifest design, they would be able to furnish rooms almost as fatal to life as "the black hole of Calcutta." But in spite of all that they can do, the materials will shrink, and no fuel has yet been found, which will burn without any air, so that sufficient ventilation is kept up, to prevent such deadly occurrences. Still they are tolerably successful in keeping ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... moment there was a crash and an unearthly scream, then a thud that sounded as if it had happened in the middle of the earth. Father Donovan and I looked around in alarm, but Paddy was nowhere to be seen. Toward the wall there was a square black hole, and, rushing up to it, we knew at once what had happened. Paddy had danced a bit too heavy on an old trap-door, and the rusty bolts had broken. It had let him down into a dungeon that had no other entrance; and indeed this was a queer house entirely, with many odd nooks ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... Adam escorted me to the passenger car filled with German immigrants, with tin cups, babies, bags, and bundles innumerable. The ventilators were all closed, the stoves hot, and the air was like that of the Black Hole of Calcutta. So, after depositing my cloak and bag in an empty seat, I quietly propped both doors open with a stick of wood, shut up the stoves, and opened all the ventilators with the poker. But the celestial breeze, so grateful to me, had the most unhappy effect on the slumbering exiles. ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the fire... and then the sun makes himself small, the sun swings down out of the sky— littler'n a star, little as a spark little as a fierce red spider on a burning thread... and then the light goes out... shivers into blackened bits.... You hold on to a wall that whirls around and the gate is a black hole. You grope your way in like a toad that's blinded by a stone... and mama puts on cold wet rags that get hot soon.... Hush! don't ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... considered the picture again... a little man fallen over like a tin soldier by the side of a big black hole. ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... a corner of shining stone, drew himself to it, reached its slanting side, then scrambled frenziedly to the top and threw himself about to face the place of slipping sands. But where the sand had been, his wildly glaring eyes found only a black hole—a vertical bore, like the ancient throat of the volcano; and this, like the tunnel in the sand, was lined with smooth ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... pithead seemed terrible in their never-ending revolutions, as they flew round to bring up the loads of coal. The big yawning chasm, with the swinging steel rope, running away down into the great black hole, was awesome to look at, as the rope wriggled and swayed with its sinister movements; and the roar and whir of wheels, when the tables started, bewildered them. These crashed and roared and crunched and groaned; they would squeal ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... she stepped to a pallet where lay a face like a girl's, Young, and pathetic with dying,—a deep black hole in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... at the black hole behind the grill ... and then Greg was pumelling him, pounding him on the back, so excited he couldn't get a sentence out, and Johnny was hovering over them, incredulous but forced to believe his eyes, like a father overwhelmed by the ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... mount thirty-five feet high and a wind roars between the high shores like a bellows—then it is that the straits roll and pitch and funnel their waters into black troughs where the ships go down. "Undertow," the old Hudson's Bay captains called the suck of the tide against the ice wall; and that black hole, where the lumpy billows seemed to part like a passage between wall of ice and wall of water, was what the mariners feared. The other great danger was just a plain crush, getting nipped between two icepans ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... 'but when is it to be, my most admirable Charron?—how much longer?—how many months?' 'Behold my fingers,' said the one who had abused me; 'I put these into those, and then you know. It would have been already, except for the business that you have been employed upon in this black hole. Hippolyte, you have done well, though crookedly; but all is straight for the native land. You have made this Government appear more treacherous in the eyes of France and Europe than our own is, and you have given a good jump to his instep for the saddle. But all this throws us back. I am tired ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... get out of there? he wondered. The machine men of Zor might never find him. What would happen to him, then? He would remain in this deathless, monotonous state forever in the black hole of the volcano's interior unable to move. What a horrible thought! He could not starve to death; eating was unknown among the Zoromes, the machines requiring no food. He could not even commit suicide. The only way for him to die would be to smash the strong metal ...
— The Jameson Satellite • Neil Ronald Jones
... were come to the lip of the volcano (it took us half a day to get up to it) we found the stone was unbelievably large—big as a cathedral. Underneath it we could look right down into a black hole which seemed to have no bottom. The Doctor explained to us that volcanoes sometimes spurted up fire from these holes in their tops; but that those on floating islands ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... of a Socrates putting his last question: "You say that 'heaven is above us.' But if one dies at noon and another at midnight, one goes toward Orion and the other toward Hercules; or an Eskimo goes toward Polaris and a Patagonian toward the coal-black hole in the sky near the south pole. Where is your heaven anyhow?" O sapient, sapient questioner! Heaven is above us, you especially; but going in different directions from such a little world as this is no more than a bee's leaving different sides of a bruised pear exuding honey. Up or down he is ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... of us, with our names painted on a door-post in right of one black hole called a set of chambers,' said Eugene; 'and each of us has the fourth of a clerk—Cassim Baba, in the robber's cave—and Cassim is the only respectable member of ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... nothin' at all new to tell you. But I'd just like to know—in this black hole I've got into—I'd just like to know that there's one human being who means well with me—I'd like to know that there's one man in the world who ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... in Bengal. In 1756 the young nawab of Bengal, Suraj-ud-Dowlah by name, seized the English fort at Calcutta and locked 146 Englishmen overnight in a stifling prison—the "Black Hole" of Calcutta—from which only twenty-three emerged alive the next morning. Clive, hastening from Madras, chastised Suraj for this atrocity, and forced him to give up Calcutta. And since by this time Great Britain and France were openly at war, Clive did not hesitate to ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... they had known it before everything was definite, and there was nothing of which a boy of spirit need be afraid. The shaft was choked with dirt a few feet below their landing-planks, and there was no spot in which a mystery might lurk; but it was very different now with that black hole leading Heaven knew into what awesome depths, harbouring goodness knew what horrors. Ted's defection had suddenly become the sentiment of the majority. At that moment Dick could have counted on Peterson ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... Cyprien disappear. As the house crumbled we could distinguish nothing but a tempest, a swirling of waves beneath the debris of the roof. Then calm was restored, the surface became smooth; and out of the black hole of the engulfed house projected the skeleton of its framework. There was a mass of entangled beams, and, amongst them, I seemed to see a body moving, something ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola
... sound of picks to come between. In thousands of other holes men work, each with his helper, all alone. The utmost the helper can do is to grow like the man he works with, or like his own pick, or like the coal he chips out, or like the black hole. The utmost the man who mines coal can do, in the way of being human, is ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... him in her arms, as though she feared to see him disappear down the black hole, and, in a trembling ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... air holes. All the air and light came through the hatch way, a sort of trap door or cellar way. In this floating dungeon, we miserable young men spent our first night, in sleepless anguish, embittered with the apprehension of our suffering cruel death by suffocation. Here the black hole of Calcutta rose to my view in all its horrors; and the very thought stopped my respiration, and set my brain on fire. In my distress, I stamped with my feet, and beat my head against the side of the ship in the madness of despair. I measured the misery of those around me by what I ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... his head into that dreadful hole, And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered further, A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole, Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after, Overcame me now his ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... momentary. Love could not brighten their lot; nay, love but made more numerous the grim host of cruel fears that pressed upon him. Ruth—God! What would happen to Ruth, what had happened to her, what was happening to her even now, while he sat mooning, cooped and helpless in this black hole? It was unendurable! ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... in the minutes that followed that there were thousands of black demons in that black hole. At the first rushing impact I shouted to Harry: "Keep your back to the wall," and for response I got a high, ringing laugh that breathed ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... know, sir. I suppose it was all due to the excitement and being fagged out with what we'd gone through in that black hole." ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... mean by going there? What is done there, that everybody throngs into those three little rooms? Was the Black Hole considered to be an agreeable REUNION, that Britons in the dog-days here seek to imitate it? After being rammed to a jelly in a door-way (where you feel your feet going through Lady Barbara Macbeth's lace flounces, and get a look from that haggard and painted old harpy, compared to which the ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the men in the cafe called back, "We can't hear you," and I repeated, "Fire higher! You nearly hit me," and pointed with my finger to where the big 44-calibre ball had left a black hole in the green paint of the trough. When they saw this there were excited exclamations from the men, and I heard the one who was giving the orders repeating my warning. And then came the shock of another ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... struck with a fresh idea, plunged into the road and made for the fire call-box at the corner. And almost as though his presence had been the cause of the fire, it dimmed, flickered, flared and went out, leaving us in darkness. Slowly we moved towards it. The patrolman came back. We reached a black hole in the snow and tripped over twisted snarls of wire. We heard the patrolman asking urgently ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... of the highroad," he replied, and then they were all silent, with their eyes fixed on the door of the cow house, which formed a sort of black hole in the wall of the building. Nothing could be seen inside, but they heard a vague noise, movements and footsteps and the sound of hoofs, which were deadened by the straw on the floor, and soon the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... larger than the others. He looked around, and there was Chiltern close to him, still fighting with his horse;—but the farmer had turned away. He thought that Chiltern nodded to him, as much as to tell him to go on. On he went at any rate. The brook, when he came to it, seemed to be a huge black hole, yawning beneath him. The banks were quite steep, and just where he was to take off there was an ugly stump. It was too late to think of anything. He stuck his knees against his saddle,—and in a moment was on the other ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... rusted by [-man-] {many} rains. We pulled with all our strength, but we could not move it. So we called International [-4-8818,-] {4-8818} and together we scraped the earth around the bar. Of a sudden the earth fell in before us, and we saw an old iron grill over a black hole. ...
— Anthem • Ayn Rand
... Air.—The Black Hole of Calcutta is an object lesson of how necessary to life is the renewal of the air supply. Few people, however, reflect that a deficient supply of fresh air may affect the health, though far short of what will cause death. Many hospitable people ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... chains of causation and unchangeable as the dead. There are not many men in the modern world who do not know that mood, though it was not discovered by the moderns; it was the final and seemingly fixed mood of nearly all the ancients. Only above the black hole of Bethlehem they had seen a star wandering like a lost spark; and it had done what the eternal suns and planets could not do. ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... the Black Hole. There we found nine others who were to suffer the same fate in the morning. I was too tired to do anything but throw myself on a filthy mattress, and in a few minutes I was sleeping what I thought was my last sleep on earth. I was roused at ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... bit of striped or colored cloth, which may have the slightest chance of deceiving the distant observer into the belief that it is a legitimate blind. This keeps off the sun, and allows a free circulation of air, which is the great object. When it is absent, the window becomes a mere black hole, having much the same relation to a glazed window that the hollow of a skull has to a bright eye; not unexpressive, but frowning and ghastly, and giving a disagreeable impression of utter emptiness and desolation within. Yet there is character ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... it; quite as bright as there is any occasion for it to be, that its little lady may see to keep it tidy. Well, it is very probable, also, that if you could look into your heart from the sun's point of view, it might appear a very black hole indeed: nay, the sun may sometimes think good to tell you that it looks so to Him; but He will come into it, and make it very cheerful for you, for all that, if you don't put the shutters up. And the one question for YOU, remember, is not "dark or light?" ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... from one black hole to another. In the first there is a kind of bin for ashes and coals, and there are pots and grills lying about—it is the kitchen. A heap of fire kindling wood in one corner, a bench or stool as black as soot can paint it, a few bowls, ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... of that either. Of course, to be sure of that, one must make a post-mortem examination. Let's get him out of this damp, black hole." ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... fell again into a cheerless silence. The moon rose with a strange, eerie swiftness over the wall of mountain before them, and its wavering reflection sprang at once to life in the swirling waters of the black hole in the Necronsett on the other side of the meadow. The old woman's heart gave a painful leap in her breast at the sight. It was probably one of the last times she would see it. Numberless occasions when she had noted it before hurried through ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... the stars off there, Alan saw the enlarging figure of Polter, his hunched shape unmistakable. He was facing the other way. He lunged and scrambled into a yawning black hole in the mountains. Polter was escaping! None of these people except himself had the drugs. He was escaping with the golden cage, out of this doomed atomic world to our ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... He laughed. "A regular black hole! But wait till I can get you out on to the loch! It's romantic enough out there. But look here, Violet! I've got to come to an understanding with you. Now that we've found each other, darling, we are not going to lose ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... not—146 in number—were shut up all night in a small room, in the hottest time of the year, and they were so crushed together and suffocated by the heat that, when the morning came, there were only twenty-three of them alive. This dreadful place was known as the Black Hole of Calcutta. The next year Calcutta was won back again; and the English, under Colonel Clive, gained so much ground that the French had no power left in India, and the English could go on obtaining more and ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... some idea of the situation. The men are very patient, but they know someone has blundered. Talk about the heroism of the Light Brigade! It is nothing to the heroism that goes cheerfully and uncomplainingly into the Black Hole of Calcutta (there is nothing else that will compare with these transports), all because it is duty. When will the people appreciate the ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... wrath among my men when they found themselves prisoners; nor was their fury diminished when our whole band was forced into a dungeon at Goree, which, for size, gloom, and closeness, vied with the celebrated black hole ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... an imposing pile. Its architecture is Gothic, and the interior produces a very fine effect by the harmony of its proportions and the richness of its details. The ill-famed "Black Hole," in which the Rajah Surajah Dowlah confined one hundred and fifty English men and women, when he obtained possession of Calcutta in 1756—confining them in a narrow and noisome cell, which poisoned them with its malarious atmosphere, so that by morning only a few ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... known as the Poorhouse. They are built on sloping ground, and on the lower side there is a small round-topped tunnel leading into a little cell dug out of the ground beneath the cottages. This little village prison was known as the "Black Hole," and was in frequent use about fifty years ago. An old resident in the village named Birdsall, who is now in the Almshouses, remembers that the last woman who was placed in the Black Hole was released by four men who forcibly broke their way in. The quaint little ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... heart wounded. It is evil to be in pain. It is evil to carry a heavy heart. It is evil to be stripped of what we have long been accustomed to lean upon. It is evil to be crushed down by loss and want. It is evil to stand by the black hole that swallows the coffin that holds the light of our eyes. It is evil to have the arrows of calumny or hate sticking in our quivering spirits. It is evil to be battered with the shocks of change and doom in the world, to have to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... said Ned. "Be awkward, wouldn't it? But don't you feel scared-like about this great black hole?" ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... with more than second-hand-looking garments. Trade was not driving, but near one or two of them dirty, ill-used looking women, a man or so, and a few children stood. At a corner which led into a black hole of a court, a coffee-stand was stationed, in charge of ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... as carefully as I did and here you will find a cave." With that she disappeared into the yawning black hole, leading both burros. Barbara and Anne stared at each other in amazement, and the latter said: "Come carefully! Anything is ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... consisting of a cow for milk, sheep, turkeys, geese, ducks, hens, etc. Got up at 6-1/2, a fine morning. Breakfast at 8, of fish, beef, mutton, omelettes, tea and coffee. A file of New York papers had been left in the night by an American packet. Found the steerage passengers had a place like the Black Hole of Calcutta, the foolish people not consenting to have their ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... the amusement of visitors, by the carbonic acid gas of the Grotto, and brought to life again by being dragged into the fresh air; nay, you are inflicting upon yourselves the torments of the famous Black Hole of Calcutta; and, if there was no chimney in the room, by which some fresh air could enter, the candles would soon burn blue—as they do, you know, when ghosts appear; your brains become disturbed; and you yourselves run the risk of becoming ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley |
